Springtime is finally here, and things are starting to bloom. That being said, I took a lot of pictures. I was so excited to see life among the rows and rows of Eleanor Roosevelt Apartment imitations, so bear with me.
On my way to meet Ben and Peter at the river to go on a bike ride, I came across this tree. The flower petals were huge! It was such a great tree. I've never seen one before, but I want one.
Between the city and the river is the Olympic Expressway, and its almost impossible to find an underpass to take you to the river. I finally came across one, met up with them, and rented a bike. We began our adventure with no particular destination. We came across a little duo music show under a bridge, stopped there for a bit, and continued on our journey. We came to the end of Seoul and decided to turn back, partly because the trail from then on became a little more rough and a little less leisurely, and partly because we wanted a beer. I'm guessing this is the the first city outside of Seoul, but I'm not entirely sure.
When Peter went back to England, he bought a Brompton, which is some special (and very expensive) bike that is lightweight and folds up to the size of the wheel. Its actually pretty unbelievable until you see it, but I still think he looks like a giant on a kids bike.
Ben was riding Peter's mountain bike. I was stuck renting a bike, which, needless to say, was way to small for me. But it had a basket to put my bag in, which was a perk. After the bike ride, my ass hurt for days.
Sangah bought Suzie, Ben, Soo (a teacher at a DYB branch southwest of Seoul), and I tickets to the LG Twins vs KIA Tigers. The tickets are really cheap, and the beer and snacks are even cheaper. Instead of having restaurants inside the stadium they have convenience stores with convenience store prices, so a half-liter beer was only $2.50. Coming from America, this was the most amazing thing at the stadium.
This was our crew: Ben, Soo, Suzie, and Sangah. Sangah bought an LG Twins hoodie in anticipation for the game.
They sell this sticks everywhere around the stadium, so instead of clapping you just smack the sticks together. We all bought a set, but I deflated mine in the first inning because they were becoming a nuisance. I had to keep leaning forward so I could see the batter past the wave of red batons. But the fans never let up. They cheered loudly the whole game. After some beers and sojus, we were all chanting the Korean chants along with them, although we had no idea what they were saying.
We still had some beer, soju, and daylight left after the game so we ventured to the river to hang out. However, we stumbled upon these little shack-like things outside the Olympic track, so we just posted up here til the sun went down. This is a typical Sangah pose, you'll see another shortly.
These huts are raised off the ground about a two feet. You have to take your shoes off to sit on it, but they are actually pretty comfortable. You can find them all over the place. One of the teachers in our branch met up with us and brought us a whole bunch of snacks ranging from beef jerky to chips to dried squid, but she forgot the beer :(
I'm not entirely sure if this is the track where the Olympic games were held, but I'm pretty certain it was.
Once the sun went down, we were supposed to meet up with an ex--DYB teacher. We waited along the highway for her to pick us up.
We all went out for barbeque. After barbeque we went to Gold Bar, where Joon and Tyler met up with us. After Gold Bar, we went to the singing room. Sangah and Ben started the show with a rendition of "Don't Stop Me Now" by Queen, which is the song Ben always sings first to kick off the festivities.
All the Korean teachers grabbed the mics for some popular Korean song, but I've never heard it before.
Sangah striking her pose again.
As I said, the trees started blooming and its beautiful! However, all the petals are starting to already fall. I was warned that Spring was really short, but I didn't know it was 2 weeks long. These trees are everywhere though. These ones are right outside my apartment.
The stream is also starting to look a lot better. Not quite there yet but definitely along the way.
This week at cooking we made Tofu Kimchi, which is one of my favorite things to eat here. It's basically just slabs of raw tofu with stir-fried kimchi. They also threw in some pork thigh.
You eat it with chopsticks by placing some kimchi and some pork on top of some tofu and eating it all together.
This month's theme is bar food, so our chef made us some kind of rice-wine cocktail. He said it was especially good for men's stamina. I'm not entirely sure if he translated that right, but I was the only guy at cooking class this week among native English speakers, so all eyes were on me. It was terrible.
Since it was my day off I went to the lake by Lotte World to read and just hang out and enjoy the day (and get some Taco Bell).
The place was really crowded and all the seats were taken, so I had to sit on a rock and lean against a tree. It was actually quite comfortable. I passed the time doing crossword puzzles my family sent me and reading Flowers for Algernon, which Joon recommended to me, and which also turned out to be an extremely depressing book about some guy who was retarded and got surgery to become smart and remembered how everyone mistreated him when he was retarded.
Anyway, I was sitting on a rock doing crosswords when 2 old ladies approached me with their phone out. I could see at a quick glance that the camera was open on their phone, so I figured that they wanted me to take a picture of them. However, when they got closer I noticed that they took a candid picture of me sitting on my rock doing crossword puzzles. Before I could fully register what just happened, they just said goodbye in Korean and walked away. I thought it was a strange gesture, them showing me the picture they took of me, but I guess its not everyday that you see a foreigner sitting on a rock doing crossword puzzles.
About 20 minutes after the ajjumas left, this old guy sat down beside me and started speaking English. Usually I try to get out of these situations, but he had me trapped, and he seemed like a nice guy. He told me that he was a retired high school Math teacher, and that for the past 5 years he has been studying English by reading conversation books and listening to the accompanying tapes. Eventually, he started reciting the tapes. "Situation 1: Tipping. Dialogue: " and then he would go off on the dialogue he memorized from the tape. After situation 1 he went to situation 2: showing gratitude, and then to situation 3: dating, all the while saying "dialogue" and started reciting the conversation. It was hard not to laugh at the scenario, but I didn't want to offend him. He said he comes the park and walks around and memorizes the tapes. Normally, people who come and start talking English to you are kinda strange, so easily approaching random people, especially foreigners, but there was something sincere about this guy. I liked talking to him. After about ten minutes, he got up to go and I thought I was going to be able to get back to my reading when he turned to me and said:
"Would you like to come to my house?"
"uhh, now?"
"Yeah! If you are free"
I immediately felt like I was going to have a panic attack, plus I was wearing my running shoes so I knew my feet smelled terrible, anyone in his apartment building would be gagging as soon as I took my shoes off, and I had to take my shoes off to enter his house, so I politely lied to him and said I had something to do. He immediately looked sad, and I felt terrible, cause he was such a genuine guy. So I told him that next Thursday I was free and then I gave him my number and he gave me mine. I'm not sure about the protocal when going to a Korean's house. Am I supposed to bring him a house warming gift? What kind of gift do you give an old Korean man? But I was excited, because I've been dying to see how Korean houses are set up. But I'm also extremely nervous because I'm not really a conversationalist when I fist meet people and there's bound to be awkward silences, but I will do my best. He got really excited again when I suggested we meet next week. I asked him when he was free and he said he's always free, he doesn't do anything, which also made me feel like a terrible person for rejecting him, but we agreed to meet back at the park sometime Thursday afternoon. We didn't set a time, so he said he would call me. I didn't want to leave my spot since it was such a great spot, but I was afraid he would come back and see me still sitting there and find out that I just blew him off, so I was forced to leave. As I was walking away, it hit me that my first Korean date is with a 66 year old man. Instead of Tuesday's with Morrie, its Thursday's with Park Sung-Do. Oh well, I'll keep you posted.
No comments:
Post a Comment